howling field 

i used to think we have coyotes but
it is the field itself howling 
in the middle of the dark.
we take a walk because there is 
nothing else to spend the day on.
my body is a colander. i catch a few noodles
but never enough. there is rice
in the fridge & nothing worth devouring.
i love a cancelled plan. i love a shut-down mirror.
the trees start whimpering & i try 
to soothe them. you never like it with
i go embrace them. you say,
"people will see you." the truth is that
i am mostly a vampire. people do not see me.
i know that's not the mythology
but sometimes we need to reinvent the
folklore to suite our metaphors. i have
fed the field shoes. i have brought her
plates of bells. in the old apartment 
i never felt alive. sometimes we went
to target just to smell candles. 
we never bought any. i know we 
don't have enough money. when i was born
my father sold his guitars one by one.
i like to believe they are in the field 
waiting to come home. i am not 
the most materialistic but i am also
not the least. at my saddest i bought toys
i never had as a kid. i didn't just
stare at them, i played with them. it did
actually make me happy but then again,
we shouldn't trust our own memories.
instead we should check the walmart footage. 
we should see exactly what we stole & how.
i am not as good a thief as i would like
my friends to believe. the field is really
going on tonight. i walk out there & it only
gets louder. the wound is often so big
that the land is left holding it. fire bomb.
broken winder. in the field there is an old
bottle dump. shards of tongues in the gritty dirt. 
i hear them talking underneath the howls.
they say, "put us back together."
the desire to return to a place that 
does not exist is different depending on
if the place really existed or not. 
one is yearning, the other, grief.